 Hey everybody, guess what? Yes, we are here for you. As always, coming at you today, Bob Lorenz, Ryan Rucco, for the first time. Bob and Ryan paired together. Ryan, I'm excited to talk about a variety of things, including, I'm not sure I'd call it a guardian angel over your shoulder, but a guardian force maybe? A guardian sith lord, how about that? Yes, I love it. Nobody on earth has one of those. Ryan Rucco has one of those. That's right, you know, I honestly, I have decided, I so badly wanted Darth Vader in the shot that I've decided to inconvenience myself by recording while sitting on my peloton, which, you know, isn't the most comfortable place for my gluteus maximus right now, but if it gets Vader in the shot, all good. All right, so obviously now I'm gonna lead you in about a three hour conversation, so you have to sit there and be like, I'm gonna die in here, Bob. So let's talk a little bit about your time that you've had right now. We're gonna get to you calling NBA games, calling the last game that was played in the NBA before things shut down, but you are such a big Star Wars fan. Have you rewatched to any of them in the time you've had off? So I haven't yet, but I do think like I need to do a full marathon at some point during this, and I'm just assuming, you know, that at some point we're going to run out of fresh Netflix content, and it'll be an obvious choice. The one thing I have done, I've watched, so they've been releasing, they've done the final season of Clone Wars on Disney Plus, which is an animated series, you know, so I've done that, and my fiance, Andrea and I, like we made kind of lists for movies like we wanted to watch, the other one hasn't seen or whatever. And number two on my choice is Rogue One. So that Star Wars movie will be on deck sometime soon. She's seen 789, but she hasn't seen the rest, and I feel like even though it's sort of out of order, Rogue One will be the next one that like, I think she'll enjoy. If you haven't seen The Mandalorian yet on Disney Plus, that's a great one where whether you're a Star Wars fan or not, that show is just an awesome show. Okay, that's a good tip. All right, so let's pivot just a little bit. First of all, this is the first time I've done one of these social distancing with somebody sitting on a peloton. Might not be the last, if we're gonna do this again. But I do know that you've done a good job of that. We encourage everybody to do the same. And I know you're also a big proponent. I don't like the word germaphobe necessarily, it might not sound like that, but your big hand sanitizer, hand washer, so that part is easy for you, right? Yes, 100% man, I'm nutty with it. I'm crazy about it. And even when I, so as I was traveling, because March is normally my busiest month, and so the first couple of weeks of March, I was all over the place. And I was tracking Italy really closely because I'm due to get married there in June. So I've been following it incredibly closely. So I knew we were about to shut everything down. And I'm traveling thinking like, we really all shouldn't be out here right now, et cetera, et cetera. And so because of it, my normal germ OCD was like magnified to the 11th power. And I'm getting on the planes, wiping down everything, like the second I get in my hotel room, wiping down everything, like I won't, even like now here at home, where it's just me and my fiance, like I won't eat with my hands unless it's immediately after I've washed them. And so I just like, I do think that like, whenever we come out of this, and we will, we will all get to the other side of this, I do think we're all gonna have better hygiene habits. Like I don't think we're gonna be like, oh, COVID's gone or we have a vaccine, like lick the ground and touch your face. I think people actually will take some of the habits from this. And maybe not be as obsessive as I am, which at times this is a turn, although right now helpful. But I feel like we're all gonna be a little bit more aware of our hygiene moving forward. Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's because if, I mean, listen, hopefully we all wash our hands anyway, but if you didn't do it maybe as much as you used to, it will be just become, it's become more of the new norm, the habit. Even for us staying in first day, I was really going stir crazy. I wasn't used to being in the house this often, especially during the baseball season, I'm gone from three in the afternoon till midnight, whatever. And so you're used to being out and all of a sudden, boom, you're in. But then after that period, you start to get in a new routine. And I think that's been the most helpful thing is we've adjusted our lifestyle, but then, okay, how do we do that to maximize our time, our time together, doing things at the house, getting stuff done, it's just a new routine. That's all it is. Once you get on that, it's pretty easy. Bob, you're 100% right. It's so weird for all of us who work in sports because we're used to, sort of our normal is no routine, right? Like because games are different times, games go different lengths, we're working off hours and off days from people, holidays, weekends, whatever it is. And so it is, it's weird to have some sort of routine where you're at home. And I agree with you. I found now this week, I kind of know what that routine is. And it's like, okay, normally I can't do a nine am workout every day or whatever or like, I can't definitively get eight and a half hour of sleep, but right now I can. So trying to find that silver lining within it all to keep us sane and also kind of like, settle in to the new routine. Have you found like, has there been a go-to food for you, Bob? That you're like, I didn't realize I was gonna crush this, much during this time, but I am. Anything that's not nailed down. No, what I found was, and this was another part of the challenge, when you're home, it almost feels like you're, like it's when you were home from school and you were sick. Yeah. So you wanted like comfort food and you wanted, so we started eating like some comfort foods and some other stuff. We're like, okay, we gotta get back to eating healthier and doing what we do. Cause we were just like, oh, you know, let me do meatloaf again. So we got better about that. Yeah. We do cook more. I find that we're trying to support local businesses. So we'll order out, but we do cook more and that's been a good thing. You know what? That's a great point, Bob. And this is something I've been trying to say too, cause I have a lot of friends who are in the hospitality business and some who have like incredible restaurants. I mean, we're talking about restaurants where, they're top 10, 15 restaurants in New York and they're normally packed every night, reservations months out. And they're going through incredible struggles right now because of this. So just picture the way it is for any restaurant. And that's just restaurants. Obviously there are a variety of different tentacles to hospitality businesses. And so I'll keep saying this anytime we have the platform, like for everybody who happens to be in the fortunate position where they can continue to support these local businesses, do that. I mean, even if it's like somebody who you normally see weekly and now you can't because their business is shut down, if you can afford to still spot them the money as if you're going to see them, do that. Because it's amazing just how many businesses are completely halted. And, you know, obviously we all want to do our part so that when we do get to the other side of this, everybody still has the jobs that they left. So, you know, I love hearing that, Bob, because it's so important for all of us to support our local businesses, you know. And if it means getting some comfort food as well, there's nothing wrong with that. Hey, once in a while, right? Just portion control, Bob. Portion control, I have to tell myself that. And the one other thing about that too that I've realized is these restaurants, most of them are doing a really good job sanitizing what they're sending out. So, you know, you don't have to think you're picking up this bag that's like, ah, what's going on here? I need to leave it outside for three hours. It's like, you know, they're doing a really good job about that, so I commend them. So, we've talked a lot and I have to go to this. We cannot go without talking about this. You did something in your life, hopefully you're only gonna do it once. And that was in March 11th or 12th, broadcasting the Nuggets Mavericks game. And you went from just being a play-by-play guy to being, as you put it in one article, and I was saying that, I read it, Walter Cronkite. He had to put Walter Cronkite hat on. You'd go back to the old journalism school. And start breaking the news while you were doing a game with Doris Burke and Tom Bernaldi about the fact that the NBA not was just gonna, you know, stop some things. It was shutting down indefinitely. What was that like for you? Yeah, man. It's funny because like, I honestly did, first of all, Doris and I went into the game feeling like this was probably going to be the last game we were doing for a while with fans and on-site. So it already had sort of this eerie, surreal feel. And then as the news develops and as it breaks, you know, you just realize that obviously the game is now secondary, right? You can't totally ignore it because there's still a game going on right in front of you. But it was sort of finding that balance of, okay, when is it appropriate? And what is the appropriate tone in addressing the game and the action and the play-by-play versus making sure we calmly convey the news? And the reason, like the example I used in my head of what was kind of the aspiration, although an aspiration I will never reach, but was my sort of my guideline to try and follow was Cronkite because Apollo 13 is one of my absolute favorite movies. And I always think about like just the way Cronkite kind of guided America through the news that night, right? And while my job was certainly not what Cronkite's was at the time, I loved the way he calmly conveyed what was going on and kept people informed, right? And that was kind of our whole mentality was, okay, everything is shifted. Now, how do we just calmly give people the information and the new information and let them know we have resources to get even more layers of this as the game's going on while also addressing the action? And it was weird because it became more of a news show, obviously, for the vast majority of it. And then at the end of the game, almost as if the players realized, whoa, this is our last chance to play for who knows how long, they then sort of re-engage and I think had a higher level of intensity and focus. And then that allowed us to sort of dip back into the action with a little bit more energy than we had throughout the rest of the broadcast. So it was surreal, man. It was a totally wild experience. And like you said, I hope that that's a one-shot deal for the rest of my broadcast career. Yeah, so was it easy for you or odd for you going from that? We're kind of at a measured tone and all of a sudden, you still got to call a game. You can't be any different, can't be a different Ryan, so to speak. You got that energy and the excitement to do. So was that easy to kind of bounce between the two? Yeah, I think it helped. Like Doris was so great to work with Doris Burke. And I thought she was also able to like seemingly transition on her own. So it wasn't me just having to shoulder that load which made it easier. And then also like, I don't know if you do this sometimes like, cause you know, when you're, if you're, let's say you're hosting a pregame or a post game or any kind of show and all of a sudden there's like some sort of sobering news story or somebody's passed away, whatever it might be. And you got to kind of shift into that and then back into the action. And I always feel like there's like sort of like, when you're in those modes, you're so careful with every word you choose, right? Like you want to make sure that's not the time you stumble or you have the wrong energy or whatever. And then kind of just using a pause and like you're gradually lifting the energy back up as you get into it so that it makes sense. So I think we were able to do that. There was maybe like one or two times where we were in the middle of like really getting news briefs so to speak, whether it was back in the studio with Van Pelt or it was Tom Bernalde talking with Mark Cuban or me and Doris ourselves talking about it where there might have been something really exciting happening where it would have made no sense for us to jump in and address it where we just kind of had to ignore it and stay on the news. But for the most part, I thought we could kind of dip back in and then sort of accelerate into the action, whatever was happening on the floor at that time. I'm going to take a wild guess. That night was the most you've ever had a producer talking in your ear. Yes, 100%. And I'll give a big shout out to Ian Bruca who actually he worked with at some time certain guys that we have a yes because if so many people were from the ABC family and Ian started there as well, he's also been a Yankee fan so he watches yes all the time. But he did an amazing job. Bob, you know what it's like if like, you're kind of getting that stuff in real time. Like you need it so clear and so digestible and he had the perfect tone and like the perfect timing and also he didn't give me too much too early. Like he gave me the stuff once it was okay for me to say it, you know? So I was very grateful and it was definitely as much as I've ever had communication with the producer during the game. Okay, we're going to wrap this up with one just kind of bring it back to that upbeat feeling. We don't know when the NBA and baseball is baseball is going to start, NBA will resume yet. But John Flaherty brought this up the other day. If you look at it from the glasses half full perspective, there's going to be a massive amount of excitement. You think of the baseball season, we don't know what it's going to be yet but let's say it's condensed. It's more of a sprint and not a marathon and the NBA certainly, those guys are going to be amped up to get back on the court. There's going to be an incredible energy. Don't you think when it comes to the time when sports resumes? I do, I do Bob. I think, you know, there's going to be the convergence of all these sports at once, which is going to feel incredible. There's going to be all of us, you know, kind of peeking our head into the sunlight again, getting to watch sports. And then there's just what you said, like the import on each game is going to be a different degree. I mean, Bob, you know, like how many times during the course of the regular season do you, you know, we all, we love our jobs, right? But like there are games where you're just like, you know, a winner or a loss today. It doesn't really matter. I feel like every night we're going to be like, hey, this game matters. Yeah, totally agree. It's going to be a lot of fun. This was fun. Thanks for the perspective of calling the last NBA game before the next first NBA game. Good stuff and may the force be with you. And may the force be with you, Bob. Oh, hey, Ryan, before we get away, I did want to mention, we're going to try and get a lot of our viewers engaged that are watching this. There is a way that they can do that, get their questions in for a Bob, a Ryan, a Flash, a Jack, whoever is doing these things. So how do they do that? Yeah, we're going to do some fun mailbag stuff I think as this develops. All they have to do is tweet at yes network with the hashtag yes mailbag. So tweet at yes network with the hashtag yes mailbag and we'll have your questions on some future episodes. All right, start lining them up, folks.